Quotes about Purpose

The vessel through which the Lord Jesus can reveal Himself in this generation is not the individual, but the body of Christ. True, "God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith" (12:3), but alone in isolation man can never fulfill God's purpose. It requires a complete body of Christ to attain to the stature of Christ and to display His glory.

God never asks us to do anything we can do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. Yet, by His grace, we are living it and doing it.

Let us not argue over our being labeled as either spiritual or carnal. If we are not governed by the Holy Spirit what profit will the mere designation of spiritual be to us? This is after all a matter of life, not of title.

My wish simply is to live my life as fully as I can. In both our work and our leisure, I think, we should be so employed. And in our time this means that we must save ourselves from the products that we are asked to buy in order, ultimately, to replace ourselves.

Charity even for one person does not make sense except in terms of an effort to love all Creation in response to the Creator's love for it.

I don't think I had even begun to have an idea where I was going, but wherever it was, that was where I wanted to go.

Emma once told me that some people spend their whole lives trying to outrun God, maybe get someplace He's never been. She shook her head and smiled, wondering why. Trouble is, she said, they spend a lifetime searching and running, and when they arrive, they find He's already been there.

Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging.

Maybe only an orphan can understand this, but we had been cut free from our anchor and the blow was crushing. We didn't know who we were, and more importantly, we didn't know whose we were -- forever proving that identity precedes purpose. You can't know who you are until you've settled whose you are. [Bones, to Murphy Shepherd, about himself and his brother Frank]

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do.

Augustine said it best: You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

We don't love because people love us back. We love because we can. Because we were made to.